Alright, Im just cleaning out some random stuff thats been sitting around thats not worth ebaying and seeing if anyone here wants it before i pretty much junk it, Ill shove as much stuff as I can in a flat rate box whoever wants it, im not looking to make money here. so anyone who is interested in the following let me know

everyone who still play DC should get a S-video cable
the diference from composite is enormous........

I'll certainly back that up.

When I first got my GameCube, I bought a four-in-one (DC, GC, Xbox, PS2...which I suppose actually makes it seven-in-one, since GC = N64 and SNES, and PS2 = PSone) S-video cable from Lik-Sang for this purpose. Cuts down on the number of cables snaking around behind my home theater, and offers a better picture than the composite cables that come with everything.

On both systems, the difference was quite drastic. The image is quite a bit crisper, the colors are cleaner, and it doesn't seem to suffer from dot-crawl nearly as much. The 'Cube has since been replaced by a Wii using component cables (which are cleaner still), but the DC is still hooked up via S-Video...which I think is the ideal solution. It's a lot crisper than composite, but it still softens the image enough that the jaggies, low-res textures, and sprite edges don't stand out as much on a large screen as they otherwise would.

For example: I have Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for both DC and Xbox. The actual title is pretty much identical on both systems, and the main criticism levvied against the game when it came out was its low-res sprites in comparison to the detailed environments. I have played it extensively both on DC via S-Video and on Xbox via component (which offers a clean, "perfect" picture)...and I must say the game looks much better on Dreamcast. Old games should not be shown too crisply, especially if you have a large / HD set, and S-Video strikes the perfect balance.

DaMadFiddler wrote:For example: I have Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for both DC and Xbox. The actual title is pretty much identical on both systems, and the main criticism levvied against the game when it came out was its low-res sprites in comparison to the detailed environments. I have played it extensively both on DC via S-Video and on Xbox via component (which offers a clean, "perfect" picture)...and I must say the game looks much better on Dreamcast. Old games should not be shown too crisply, especially if you have a large / HD set, and S-Video strikes the perfect balance.

This is OT but what's your TV set ? I am asking because I am playing Dreamcast on a CRT monitor via VGA-box and a PAL CRT SD-TV via RGB-Scart. While PAL-60 via RGB looks fantastic on the big screen, 480p via VGA beats it by far. Being able to actually see the pixel art is a huge plus in my opinion.

DaMadFiddler wrote:For example: I have Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for both DC and Xbox. The actual title is pretty much identical on both systems, and the main criticism levvied against the game when it came out was its low-res sprites in comparison to the detailed environments. I have played it extensively both on DC via S-Video and on Xbox via component (which offers a clean, "perfect" picture)...and I must say the game looks much better on Dreamcast. Old games should not be shown too crisply, especially if you have a large / HD set, and S-Video strikes the perfect balance.

This is OT but what's your TV set ? I am asking because I am playing Dreamcast on a CRT monitor via VGA-box and a PAL CRT SD-TV via RGB-Scart. While PAL-60 via RGB looks fantastic on the big screen, 480p via VGA beats it by far. Being able to actually see the pixel art is a huge plus in my opinion.

My TV is a 48" rear-projection Toshiba model. It automatically upscales broadcast-quality images to 1080i, and has traditional (cable, composite, S-video) and both component and HDMI input, but no VGA, DVI, SCART, etc.

I've only had the opportunity to use the HDMI once, and it did beat out the component quality-wise. And indeed, the component is much clearer than S-Video, which in turn is sharper than composite.

The point I was making above is that the sprites in MvC2 are rather low-resolution, which creates a sharp contrast with the more detailed sets and polygonal backgrounds. The game therefore looks better (in my opinion) when NOT seen with pixel-perfect clarity...S-Video is good enough that the colors are much sharper, but the edges are not as crisp as with component or above...which in this game's case, is a good thing.

In other words: It's clear enough to make the game look good, but not so clear as to show how dated it is. It's a personal aesthetic preference...the same way I prefer playing emulated games with bilinear filtering turned on, for example.